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On the Author
'Stephen King' Stephen King is a very prolific writer, who writes more than just Science Fiction and horror Novels. You can safely assume that every word he writes will eventually find its way either to the Big Screen or the Small Screen. Recent examples are Riding the Bullet, which began as an Internet story and should soon reach the Big Screen, the new (and rather narcissistic) adaptation of Lars von Trier's The Kingdom, The Dead Zone (which was actually a nice surprise), and the rather disappointing Secret Window. Interestingly enough, the Movie adaptations of his novels which were not necessarily Science Fiction or Horror Novels were far more successful (see The Shawshank Redemption, Stand by Me, The Green Mile, etc'). I will discuss The Children of the Corn later on. One of King’s Novels, the incredibly funny The Eyes of the Dragon, is the exception that proves the rule in this context. In this Novel King tried to create a typical medieval myth of noble princes and evil wizards, and it presents evil and dealing with it a very interesting way. In one word - recommended! The Dark Tower is a series of books which incorporates themes from multiple genres, including fantasy, science fantasy, horror and western. It describes a "gunslinger" and his quest toward a tower, the nature of which is both physical and metaphorical. The series has become a linchpin that ties together much of King's body of work. The worlds of The Dark Tower are in part composed of locations, characters, events and other various elements from many of King's novels and short stories. King has described the series as his magnum opus. Besides the eight novels that compose the series proper, many of King's other books relate to the story, introducing concepts and characters that come into play as the series progresses. The series was chiefly inspired by the poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" by Robert Browning, whose full text was included in the final volume's appendix (see also here). In the preface to the revised 2003 edition of The Gunslinger, King also identifies The Lord of the Rings (King's style of location names in the series, such as Mid-World (Middle Earth) and his development of a unique language abstract to our own (High Speech), are also influenced by J. R. R. Tolkien's work), Arhurian Legend, Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, its stepchild The Magnificent Seven, Sergio Leone's "Man with No Name" trilogy (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly), and other works by Howard Hawks and John Sturges, etc'. He also identifies Clint Eastwood's "Man with No Name" character as one of the major inspirations for the protagonist, Roland Deschain. Many direct references to popular culture are noted either by characters or via narration within the book's text. Such instances include: The Wolves use weapons resembling the snitches found in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series (which are actually stamped 'Harry Potter Model' - a direct reference to the Golden Snitch from the J.K. Rowling books and to the Dr. Seuss characters) and lightsabers found in George Lucas' Star Wars, and are revealed to be robots and to have Doctor Doom-like visages (see the Marvel Comics comic books). A "messenger robot" similar in demeanor to the android C-3PO from the Star Wars movies, with the look of an Asimovian robot; Also, in minor reference to the Harry Potter series, King makes use of the same font (for chapter titles) used in all seven Harry Potter books. King also references an earlier, uncollected short story from the late 1980s called "The Reploids", which deals with people sliding between realities and also features denominations of money featuring President Chadbourne. King saw The Dark Tower series as a first draft and was planning to rewrite it to eliminate continuity errors and possibly remove himself from the later books, but after revising The Gunslinger he decided a rewrite for the whole series was no longer necessary.